Your Favorite Things About Israel

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Shabbat Shalom, everyone.


Jewish Practice Mitzvahs & Traditions Shabbat Shabbat Prayers
Eshet Chayil Hebrew and English Text


Eshet Chayil Hebrew and English Text

 

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David Ben-Gurion with his wife and others at the Haifa docks to see the last contingent of British troops leave Israel on July 4, 1948. Bettmann/Getty.

 

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February 25, 2020

Deadline reports how Netflix has snapped up the rights to The Life Ahead, an Italian drama in which Sophia Loren plays a Holocaust survivor. Reading this, I have been reminded of Loren’s support for Israel and the Jewish people.

She was set to perform a one-woman show back in 2016 (I am not entirely sure what happened with this, but I don’t think it went ahead, because I cannot find one report or photo about it. When Sophia Loren comes to Israel, you tend to know about it).

Before that, she was here in 2006 to attend the 70th birthday celebrations of Zubin Mehta, and before that in 1999 for Mehta’s 30th anniversary as director of the Israel Symphony Orchestra.

Sophia Loren, Fan of Israel

 

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Coronavirus and the Biblical Quarantine
by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

Public health officials around the world are desperately trying to cope with the spread of the coronavirus. There is growing fear that a global pandemic may be impossible to stop. So far, this respiratory illness has infected more than 75,000 people and killed at least 2000 to the best of our knowledge. Cruise ships, unwitting tourists, travelers and others are slowly transmitting this angel of death to destinations far from its Chinese source.

Modern medicine, with all of its miracles, is stymied. There is no cure. The best and only solution for now is quarantine. Those suspected of being carriers need to be isolated. Contact with the infected is simply too dangerous.

There is a biblical parallel of quarantine that Jewish scholars viewed from a moral perspective.

The book of Leviticus describes the metzora, a person afflicted with tzara'at, a disease commonly mistranslated as leprosy. In fact, the disease is a spiritual malady, primarily caused by speaking slander about others. The metzora is someone who was, in Hebrew, motzi ra - an originator of evil talk, and he was to be quarantined, sent outside of the camp, sparing the community from his ability to infect others with his destructive gossip.

Thus, the biblical quarantine was intended not to isolate a carrier of physical disease but rather of moral turpitude.

Coronavirus and the Biblical Quarantine

 

[Sixties Fan]

Happy Adar

A Scroll of Esther stored in a beautiful case (Shutterstock).



In the third year of his reign, he gave a banquet for all the officials and courtiers—the administration of Persia and Media
Esther 1:3 (The Israel Bible™)

Hear the verse in Hebrewhttps://israel365.acemlnb.com/lt.php?s=a4c61f9455954d6853e21dc458bb63bd&i=194A2326A1A3544

bish-NAT sha-LOSH l’-mol-KHO a-SAH mish-TEH l’-khol sa-RAV va-a-va-DAV KHAYL pa-RAS u-ma-DAI ha-par-t’-MEEM v’-sa-RAY ha-m’-dee-NOT l’-fa-NAV

Today is the first day (Rosh Chodesh) of the Hebrew month of Adar, when we celebrate Purim! The Scroll of Esther begins with a banquet, but what reason was there to celebrate in Ahasuerus’s third year? The answer is all about the Land of Israel (of course!) The prophet Yirmiyahu, who lived at the end of the first Temple period, prophesied that the Children of Israel would be in exile for 70 years (Jeremiah 29:10). According to the Sages (Megilla 11b), Ahasuerus erroneously calculated that these 70 years had elapsed and that Hashem had forsaken the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. Not only did he host a celebratory banquet, but the Sages add that he donned the vestments of the high priest and used captured vessels from the Beit Hamikdash to emphasize this point. Punishment was exacted on Queen Vashti, wife of Ahasuerus and the granddaughter of Nebuchadnezzar, the wicked ruler who had destroyed the Temple. The Sages teach that Vashti convinced her husband not to allow the rebuilding of the Beit Hamikdashin Yerushalayim during his reign. Therefore, Vashti is punished. The rest of the story that unfolds is therefore all about the connection between the People of Israel and the Land of Israel!

 

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9 Things You Didn't Know About Purim | My Jewish Learning

 

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Must-Know Purim Words and Phrases | My Jewish Learning

 

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An Israeli Arab, and proud to be a Zionist ~ Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

 

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Israeli song for Eurovision selected - Music & Entertainment

 

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Purim in the Community | My Jewish Learning

 

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Video: Purim in Tel Aviv in the 1930s ~ Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

 

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https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/this-is-in-our-hands/

 

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